The Difference of a Word
by JaxWin
Summary: Sakuno stammered out an apology to the one and only Echizen Ryoma, in front of the whole school. "S-sorry, Ryoma-kun, I'm so sorry I fell for you. ...! ON YOU! I meant 'ON you!" Featuring the mischievous Karupin, blushing Sakuno, and Flirty  ?  Ryoma.


**Alternate Titles:** "I'm Sorry I Fell for You!" and "Sakuno Gets Shot by a Dying Will Bullet"

**Disclaimer:** P= I dun' own't.

Face hot, head bowed down, and a colorfully wrapped lunch box stiffly held out in her hands, Ryuuzaki Sakuno stammered out an apology to the one and only Echizen Ryoma, in front of the whole school. "S-sorry, Ryoma-kun, I'm so sorry I fell for you."

What's this? A public confession? The girls loitering around the school's front yard whispered behind their hands, giggling to themselves. Hopefully Ryoma-sama would shoot down the little upstart just like he did all the other girls that confessed to him.

As to the little upstart herself, she hadn't even realized what was going on. It wasn't until her not-so-subtle friend Tomoka elbowed Sakuno playfully in the ribs and loudly whispered, "Way to confess in style, Sakuno!"

Even after that, it still took a few moments for her brain to process what it had just told her mouth to say and her body temperature probably raised a couple degrees above a good fever before she could stammer "…! ON YOU! I meant 'ON you'!"

…

"Aww, look at the poor kitty!" some girls cooed, pointing into the branches of a tree lining the schoolyard. "It looks like it's stuck!"

"We should rescue it!" One girl suggested brightly.

One of the girl's friends laughed. "Oh silly, naïve little girl, that's exactly what the boys want: you, a girl in a skirt, climbing a tree on such a windy day and practically exposing yourself for the entire school to see!" the friend scoffed knowingly.

"Oh yes, that makes lots of sense, we definitely wouldn't want that to happen," the rest of the girls tittered. "We'll just have to leave the little kitty cat. We wouldn't be able to climb that tree anyway."

Following the leader of the group out the school gates, the yard slowly emptied, and Ryuuzaki Sakuno was left by herself in the yard.

Now, people could say whatever they liked about Sakuno's motor skills and coordination (or lack thereof) but let it never be said that Sakuno was the type of girl to leave innocent kitties stranded in trees, no, not ever. So she patiently waited until all the rest of the students had left before dropping her bag at the base of the tree trunk and awkwardly trying to climb it.

"Here, kitty, c'mere," Sakuno called out softly to the cat. Somehow, she was able to shimmy her way onto the same branch - and with minimal injury, too. The cat was lovely, a white cat with patches of black coloring its face, ears, paws, and oh so fluffy tail. Only a few feet away from her, the cat licked its paw haughtily and refused to walk those few feet.

Sakuno gritted her teeth and grimaced. "Well, aren't you arrogant? Reminds me of someone I know," she laughed nervously, trying not to look down at the ground. "Still, if I don't bring you down, your owner would be really sad, wouldn't they?"

Meowing pitifully from where it was balanced at the very tip of the branch, the cat egged Sakuno to climb out further.

Squeezing her eyes shut tightly, she inched further and further out onto the limb until a soft, velvety paw rested on her cheek. Opening her eyes, Sakuno came face to face with the cat, who seemed to be smiling benignly. "You may take me down now," it seemed to say. Sakuno laughed lightly, finally glad that the ordeal was over, but just as she removed one hand from its death grip on the branch to pick the cat up, she heard a voice.

"Karupin, where are you Karupin?" called a voice that Sakuno knew only too well. "If you don't come out soon, I'll really leave you here, you know."

Gasping, Sakuno hurriedly tried to arrange her skirt so that if Ryoma happened to look up - but why was he here at all? Weren't tennis practices cancelled today?

"Oh? Isn't this Ryuuzaki's bag?" Ryoma asked himself in a startling moment of sensitivity.

Sakuno was touched that he would recognize her bag and would have liked to say as much, but sealed her lips, praying, rather, that he would pass by without noticing her in the tree. She struggled into an upright sitting position, making sure that all was covered. Of course, this took her away from her most stable position, but it's not like the wind was just going to knock her out of the tree.

"Ah, well, I'm sure she'll come back for it or something. Karupin! Where are you?"

Except the cat did. Knock her out of the tree, that is, and just when Ryoma was about to leave. The cat decided to jump up and down a bit, shaking the branch, and effectively shaking Sakuno off the branch. With a short "kyaa!' Sakuno fell backwards and towards Ryoma.

"… Ryuuzaki?" Miraculously (thank god for tennis reflexes) Ryoma had managed to catch the girl and was now standing on the edge of the school yard, with Sakuno in his arms, bridal style.

To Sakuno there was something faintly wrong with such a position coupled with the fact that they were on school grounds where PDA's were strictly forbidden (not that this was really any form of public display of affection, right?), so she stuttered with all her dignity, "P-put me down, please!"

And Ryoma would have, since, as strong as he was, he was a seventh grader and not one very inclined towards weight-lifting, but the cat in the tree made another decision neither Ryoma nor Sakuno would appreciate. It decided that it hadn't been enough to simply knock a girl out of a tree, and my, weren't those two down there taking much too long? So it jumped daintily off from its perch and stepped against the boy's head and shoulders to make a graceful landing on the ground. Ten points for the white, spotted cat.

Ryoma, on the other hand, shifted in surprise, exclaiming, "Karupin?" and though he was usually more agile and could probably take being a landing pad for his cat tens of times over on other days, today he was carrying a bit more than just himself, and while falling, managed to twist his ankle.

"Ryoma-kun?" Sakuno hastily jumped off the ground, after Karupin had managed to push them both to the ground in one step, and knelt by his side. "Are you alright?" she asked, worried at the grimace of pain on her prince's face.

"Argh, the captain's going to love this," Ryoma groaned, sitting up and nursing his ankle. "I think it's sprained. Maybe you should get some–"

"SPRAINED?" the girl yelled loudly enough to scare some birds into flight a couple blocks away.

Ryoma sighed, resting his forehead in his palm. "Help is on its way."

…

"Three weeks," the doctor decreed, leaning back in his swivel chair with a sigh. "You're very lucky it wasn't worse. Injuries like this could take more than months to heal, sometimes with permanent injury. It's only after careful examination and constant insistence that you're a fast healer that I'm saying three weeks, at all."

"I am a fast healer. I'll probably be finished healing in two weeks," the boy replied, seeming to take the doctor's diagnosis as a challenge. "I'll be playing tennis again in no-"

"Not so fast," Coach Sumire Ryuuzaki growled. "You won't be playing tennis for a month."

"A month?" Ryoma yelped, almost jumping up off the examination bed, only to be pushed back down, none too gently by his coach.

"What, did you think you were going to get off without punishment for using the school tennis courts without supervision just because you were already hurt?" Sumire replied angrily. "You're to stay off that ankle for extra time just to make sure you aren't permanently injured and your parents have already arranged for muscle therapy sessions after school at a nearby training center during regular practice times."

"But-"

Coach Ryuuzaki silenced her student with a glare that said "One more word and it's two months."

Sullenly, Ryoma hopped off the bed, accepting the crutch that his coach thrust at him, and hobbled out of the room.

In the next room, the Seigaku team plus Sakuno were waiting anxiously. They all simultaneously jumped up as soon as he came out, all asking the same question: Would everything be alright?

"A month. I can't play tennis for a month, and I have to walk around with _this_," he answered bitterly, disdainfully holding the crutch away from him.

"Thank god you're alright!"

"That's all?"

"Geez, way to make us worry over nothing."

"Nya, Ochibi's going to be alright!"

"Hmph, it would've been troublesome training another lackey."

"So since you're not playing tennis, you wouldn't mind taste testing a few… concoctions, right?"

"Suck it up, Echizen, it's your fault anyways, playing alone on the school courts."

While Ryoma was being surrounded by his teammates, Sakuno stood back a few meters and called out timidly, "Uhm, Ryoma-kun, I'm really, really…"

Ryoma turned at the sound of her voice, and found a picture of a cat that looked almost exactly like Karupin on the wall right behind her ear. "You," he said coldly. "It's all your fault."

"Ryoma-kun, I…" Sakuno gasped. She couldn't remember ever hearing such anger in Ryoma's voice.

"Oh?" Ryoma shifted his focus slightly and suddenly noticed Sakuno. Hmm, wouldn't be good to look at her right now, he was too angry. The dense girl might actually think he was mad at her. So, despite, hearing her call his name, he resolutely turned back to his teammates and refused to face the poor girl. By the time she ran out of the room crying, he was already deeply immersed in a conversation with Momo about a recent tennis match.

…

When Sakuno finally arrived at home, her plan of action had been decided and nothing would get in the way of these plans. She didn't care if Ryoma didn't like her anymore after she had injured him (disregarding the question of whether he liked her even slightly before the incident) but she wouldn't be able to die in peace if he didn't forgive her.

Ryoma's unreasonably cold behavior towards her was unacceptable but it also inspired her. Tears had turned into determination. Sakuno's resolution was now almost physically tangible, as she stomped into the kitchen of her home. With fire burning in her eyes, she donned an apron and set out ingredients to make the best damn bento Ryoma would ever have in his entire life.

…

It had seemed for a while that Sakuno's face would remain permanently fire-hydrant-red, but by the end of the school day when Sakuno was finishing clean-up duty in the classroom, she was back to her natural color.

The school was almost empty of students by now, but Sakuno had stayed a little longer intentionally. "Thank god I won't run into him now," she breathed in relief.

"Run into who?" Ryoma asked from behind her.

She inhaled sharply in quiet surprise. "Ryoma-kun."

"You're not stuttering anymore," Ryoma noted, sounding almost disappointed. He began hobbling with his crutch down the hall and almost instinctively Sakuno followed.

"After today, I don't think I have any shame left to stutter," she answered tiredly.

Ryoma chuckled lowly, "And what exactly happened to my apology bento?"

"Ah, I'm really sorry about that," Sakuno cringed. "I think some of your fans must have stolen it when I was out of the classroom, because it disappeared. Sorry, I'll make you another one."

"Hmm, there must not have been a lot of feeling behind that apology if you lost it so easily," Ryoma said, half-jokingly.

"There was!" she retorted indignantly. "I stayed up half the night pouring heartfelt feelings into the thing."

"And I was looking forward very much to accepting those feelings."

"You mean the bento," Sakuno corrected slowly, her face starting to color as he teased her.

"Of course," Ryoma smirked as Sakuno's face turned redder. "I wonder if I should be mad at you for taking back those feelings after offering them to me."

"The bento, Ryoma-kun, we're talking about a bento!"

"I'm not too mad, though," he said, grinning outright as he pointedly ignored her. "After all, I don't allow things to be taken back once they've been given to me."

"SPEAKING OF BEING MAD, RYOMA-KUN." Sakuno took a deep breath to regain herself. Pouting, she continued. "You shouldn't be mad at all _about the bento_. You were mad enough last night at the doctor's office. It was like you never wanted to speak to me ever again."

"Never speak to you again?" he repeated, allowing her to change the subject. "Maybe not buy you catnip for the next couple weeks. It's my cat I'm mad at, not you."

"That was your cat?"

"Yeah, that was Karupin."

"I didn't know you had a cat! But somehow I'm not surprised that you're his owner, you are pretty similar," she giggled.

"What's that's supposed to mean?" he asked, laughing as well.

There was a short comfortable pause, in which Sakuno naturally ended up ahead of Ryoma due to not having a crutch.

"Hey, Sakuno."

"Mm?" she answered, turning around only to be pinned against the wall, Ryoma's hands planted firmly on the wall on both sides of her.

"Sorry," he grinned. "I tripped."

"No matter how you look at it, you can't have - !"

"Sakuno," he interrupted in a serious voice. "I really want to hear again what you said this morning."

Sakuno's lip trembled, but she managed to repeat evenly, "I'm sorry I fell on you."

"Minus the correction," he said impatiently. "Minus the sorry."

"Ryoma-kun, you're bullying me!"

"Consider it payback for the pubic embarrassment this morning."

He waited silently until Sakuno wailed "Isn't this enough?"

Seeing a shine in her eyes indicative of tears, Ryoma finally backed away. Softly he said, "Yeah, I'm sorry, we're even now."

Turning away, he pulled his cap low over his face, and said almost too quietly to be heard, "I just wanted to hear the girl I liked saying she liked me back."

Sakuno had slid down the wall and sat against it sniffling and rubbing away the start of tears, not really having heard what Ryoma had confessed. By the time she came back to herself, Ryoma had hobbled on ahead and was leaving the school building.

"Ryoma-kun!" she called, after running to catch up with him. The other teen turned and raised an eyebrow expectantly. For a few moments she could do nothing but gasp for breath, but at last she took an exceptionally large breath, screwed her eyes shut, and yelled, "Ryoma-kun, I really like you!"

After letting her loud declaration echo in the empty school yard a while, Ryoma grinned and hugged her tightly. Whispering softly into her ear, he said slowly, "I'm sorry, I don't think I caught what you just said." He could feel the heat coming to her face, and with a devilish smirk asked in his most polite voice, "Could you say it again?"

"Ryoma-kun, you - !" Sakuno pushed him away and swatted his arm lightly. "You're bullying me again!"

"I'm not sorry," he grinned, landing a quick peck on her cheek before she could swat him again. "Your face is too cute when you're embarrassed."

While she paused to blush in embarrassment, he tossed her bag of rather heavy books which she instinctively caught. "Carry those for me?"

"I thought you said we were even," Sakuno pouted, shouldering the books anyways. He _was_ injured.

"This is for making me wait on your confession."

"Fine, but I'm not going all the way to your house, it's too far."

"Aww, but Karupin wants to see you again."

"Well," she smiled, following him. "I guess I do need to thank Karupin."

**Author's Note:** It might seem a little OOC that Sakuno and Ryoma have an almost-normal, bantering conversation. It didn't come to me at first, but I thought it would be even weirder for them to like each other without being at the decent conversation stage of relationship first 0_o. Pfft, and also, everytime I re-read the ending, I burst into laughter and think "reversal of gender role stereotypes ftw!"


End file.
